Turns out Justice David Souter is an outdoorsman who wants to get in more hours on the dirt. From today’s New York Times: Friends said Thursday evening that he had often spoken of his intentions to be the court’s first…
In the news
750,000 California acres get wilderness designation
by tom • March 31, 2009 • 1 Comment
This morning’s Mercury News covers President Obama’s signing of legislation that gives official wilderness protection to 2.1 million acres across the United States. With Obama’s signature, wilderness designation was extended to roughly 750,000 acres of federally owned land in California,…
Someday soon we’ll be able to hike to the top of Mount Umunhum
by tom • March 28, 2009 • 2 Comments
So says Paul Rogers in this morning’s Mercury News. After more than 22 years of bureaucratic inaction, efforts to clean up a former Air Force radar station on a scenic mountaintop above Silicon Valley and open its summit to hikers,…
Updates on those who lost homes in last summer’s fires
by tom • December 14, 2008 • 0 Comments
This morning’s Mercury News has a couple nice stories exploring the contrasts among those whose homes were destroyed in 2008 wildfires. Those hit by the Trabing Fire in Larkin Valley near Santa Cruz are getting their households back together. Tough,…
Hiker survives two nights lost in Henry Cowell Redwoods
by tom • December 14, 2008 • 1 Comment
A hiker took her dog hiking in the Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. The dog got her lost, but also kept her alive. The woman, Darlene Luckenbach of Santa Cruz, spent the first night snuggled with…
Take a bow, 4WheelBob
by tom • November 30, 2008 • 6 Comments
Herr Coomber is profiled yet again by the Chron. He got the nickname because he was regularly spotted pushing his wheelchair up mountains, down rocky gorges and along dusty trails in out-of-the-way places. He has been on virtually every hiking…
About those benches
by tom • November 6, 2008 • 0 Comments
You don’t have to be Wallace Stegner to get a bench named after you in the Midpeninsula Open Space Preserve, and a fat wallet alone won’t do it, either. In case you wondering how one gets one of those benches,…
East Bay parks bond passes
by tom • November 5, 2008 • 2 Comments
Contra Costa Times has the details: Measure WW put on the ballot by the East Bay Regional Park District got 71 percent of the vote, more than enough to pass the two-thirds majority it needed. Measure WW will finance $500…
So who are you voting for today?
by tom • November 4, 2008 • 17 Comments
Or, better yet, what are you voting against? I’m a cautious, fiscally conservative, middle-class white guy who thinks the United States of America is the greatest large country on this planet of ours, but I almost never vote for Republicans.…